I've cleaned off my computer and my phone. I'm not doing one more thing work related until this meeting. If they force me out before January they are getting very little more from me.

So Tim's mitral valve is pretty prolapsed, because the chord that should be attached to it is ruptured. He'll have surgery to repair the chord and the valve, probably after the first of the year. Next week he goes in for a trans-esophageal echocardiogram to get a better picture of the heart, and he'll also have an angiogram to make sure there aren't any blockages.

So it's not life-or-death urgent that he has the repair, like, tomorrow, but the cardiologist wants to get it taken care of as soon as they can can. But since the holidays are coming up, the surgery will likely be in January, which is fine. The repair is a pretty common procedure that can be done with a minimally invasive technique, so as long as they don't find a blockage in his arteries (and there really shouldn't be, because there's no family history and he's a vegetarian who doesn't smoke), it'll be an easy procedure. (If they do find a blockage, they have to do a bypass, which is definitely more complex. But again, that's very unlikely to be necessary.)

I'm glad it's not a worst case situation, Steph.

I hope the meeting goes ok, msbelle.

Thank you, Board Mom.

I took The Bus out at 4:30 for a Holiday Lights Ride around Cambridge, which alas was pretty sparse on the lights, and heavy on the traffic. Also after dark, which really ups the danger and stress factor with narrow streets and crazy drivers and suicide bicyclists. But no one got hurt and all my passengers seemed well-pleased. I still feel like I should give out consolation rides at a later time at night (like, say, 8 PM) so that I could head for the other side of town where some of the houses that have lights are closer together.

Ah well.

Steph I hope that when it comes time to do the procedure everything goes quickly and smoothly .

With Calli, I am glad it is not urgent URGENT. I work to help train people on these surgeries, and they really work out well. Non invasive and minimally invasive are so low risk and get such good results now.

I finally actually bought extra groceries. Which sounds nutty, but I have been trying to control myself because I have, like 5 bottles of olives. But I bought some meat to put in the freezer and such at Aldi. And a larger pan at Aldi, because my mom wants me to make stuffed shells for Christmas. This is all so much easier without the theatre, because I can just put that energy toward, like, my life. I think I had just been living like a college theatre student for 20 plus years instead of paying attention to my life!

My job thing is weird, but may be straightening around. The incompetent person is gone, and I am basically cleaning up her messes.. But per my boss, am tracking all the independent decisions I make, as that is what argues for me to continue doing this as a higher level job. We are looking at rewriting my job description as sort of a Business Process Creator/Project Manager, with my first job to be fixing my existing job, but then possibly moving on, once it is fixed, to developing processes and training around new initiatives. My school is basically moving, with no middle area, to a completely paper based, individual faculty decision making process to having software for things. I know, we are very behind. But this would be my dream job, where I figure out the most efficient and customer service orientation way to do things, and then hand them off for other people to execute! I have some really strong faculty advocates, so maybe? I am never that hopefull, but it all seems to be working itself out as new faculty directors are hired who don't have the same strong prejudices that staff cannot make any decisions.

I am so tired from work. I feel like I am there all the time. They opend the store early for empolyees to shop (it was double discount today ...well today, tomorrow and Sat) and I went and did some. I am also returning some of what I bought because we decided not to. Matthew's nephew's are the harderst but we decided on Playstation gift cards and fuzzy socks (everyone is getting socks). Except his oldest nephew, Matthew is giving him one of his Dad's Stenson hats.

Yikes Steph—that's scary! Glad to hear it is not considered super urgent and should be relatively easy, but still!

Fingers crossed, msbelle.

That all sounds promising, Steph. It's good they saw this now, so it's not an emergency.

I finally committed to going to my high school reunion a few days ago, and now the organizer has changed the location, and the cost per person has doubled. I am honestly not sure if I want to go to this thing $120 worth.

Yeah, no.

I finally committed to going to my high school reunion a few days ago, and now the organizer has changed the location, and the cost per person has doubled. I am honestly not sure if I want to go to this thing $120 worth.

$120 is absolutely a fine cutoff point for ditching the official event and going for drinks with the select handful of people you were going to snark with all night anyway.